Stockton museum stands as a memorial to children everywhere

Walk into the building on Weber Avenue in downtown Stockton that is fronted by a colorful mural and giant toy soldiers.

Roger Phillips

Walk into the building on Weber Avenue in downtown Stockton that is fronted by a colorful mural and giant toy soldiers.

See the real-life fire engine, the helicopter, the police car and motorcycle, the slide, the face-painting booth.

It's a children's wonderland. And the 22,000-square-foot Children's Museum of Stockton is the most visible, tangible and positive legacy of the Cleveland Elementary School shootings.

One year after teacher Janet Geng was the only adult wounded in the attack, she paid a visit to Washington, D.C., to lobby for a national ban on assault rifles. During the trip, Geng and her two sons visited the Capital Children's Museum.

When she returned home, Geng said she was determined to erect a museum that would serve as a memorial honoring "the suffering and pain the children went through that day."

Stockton's Children's Museum, visited by thousands of kids every year, was the result.

"We wanted something to remain to remind people that we did care about all of our children," Geng said 10 years ago.

Former Mayor Ed Chavez added, "The Children's Museum was a token of appreciation of all children and particularly of what this particular community went through during that ordeal."

Years after the shootings, Geng still bore the pain. She used a cane to get around, and though she returned to teaching after being wounded, she soon found she could no longer handle the job physically or emotionally.

"How many teachers have been on yard duty and had five kids die on them?" she asked in 1999.

Before she died in 2005 at age 53, Geng explained how she tried to move forward in the aftermath.

"The pain is there, always with you, and you can't ignore it," Geng said. "You shouldn't ignore it. But you have to live, ... and you live with what you've got."